Chess
by TrainxEve-Fan12
Summary: She was the Queen, and nothing more. CielxLizzie


She likes to pretend she's more than a piece on the board.

She knows perfectly well she's nothing but another broken figure on his great big chessboard, just like a million others, but she likes to tell herself she's not.

In a horribly sick, grotesque sort of way, she should be pleased. She should be pleased because at least she is the Queen, most important to the game (next to the King, of course) most valuable, strongest and most esteemed. But ultimately, she's a piece to be used and moved to his delight – no, his demand, because he never feels delight any longer at all. She's vital to him, essential, _loved_. She's something to treasure but, in the end, she's merely another member of his great, sad, horrific game, to be sacrificed to protect her precious King. She is a game piece, something to further his goals, but she is not human and he does not love her nearly so much as she loves him.

She knows it, and that knowledge hurts like hell.

When they got married, she tried to make herself more tolerable. Her charming attitude – and it's not that her personality really isn't cute, and all that, but it's not nearly as cute as she pretends it is – was bearable and even pleasant and vital in small doses. But on the whole, she's aware she can't be too joyful…and who could be, living in a mansion where a dark-eyed butler with bloodied hands seems to always be watching her? Who could be, knowing that the pawns are dying and the game is continuing, and no matter how many enemies they kill – she kills – it is never enough, there are always more, always more. Her sparkling personality still shines through, but in more subdued ways. The curtains are open more often. She bakes cookies.

She sleeps alone most nights. Sometimes she wakes up from nightmares and he's there next to her, and she wants to wake him and let him protect her, but she doesn't.

Slowly, the pawns in the game are sacrificed. The King stays, unmoving, as his footmen die for him. He doesn't seem to care.

She tries to keep pretending like everything's normal. From inside the Phantomhive manor, it's easy enough. The killing and danger all seem very far away, and although she knows that this is a dangerous way to think, she embraces it for sanity's sake. She keeps pretending like she is a normal wife with a normal husband who never makes time for her anymore but –

_Don't think about that, don't think about how he doesn't love you, don't think._

One day, the knight, the bishop, and the rook fall, too. It was only a matter of time, for this is how the game is played, but it hurts just as much nonetheless. The knight falls first, guns blazing the way she'd have wanted and takes out so many of them with her. The bishop next, in an explosion that nearly destroys the mansion and throws her into a wall and nearly cracks her skull open. Then the rook, and she's twice as sad at his death because she expected it, because he could not survive without the knight and the bishop anymore than he could survive without air. He goes into the fight blind with rage but lucid enough to know that it's a suicide mission. Blonde, gold and red haired bodies slumped on the ground against, pale, marred skin coloured crimson, the prettiest and most horrible of shades. She's filled with righteous fury and so she disposes of the intruders who have taken her friends and Ciel's protection. No, the pitch-black butler does not kill them; this is _her _revenge and _her _anger. _I am the goddamn Queen, not him_. She can _at least_ claim that much.

She knows the next logical step, although she rarely allows herself to think of it. Unless they can destroy the opponent, the Queen is next to be sacrificed. Sebastian searches for and finds replacements for the servants, but they fall quickly. Logically, she will be the next to descend.

She spends her nights praying that Ciel's opponents fall before such a time, that they all disappear, soon, somehow. She doesn't want to die, she fears death more than she cares to admit, but more than that she fears leaving Ciel. He loves her, although not like she loves him, and if she dies the way his mother and father did, the way Aunty Anne did, he will come unhinged. He will finally snap, and the power he controls but rarely abuses will change from a way to protect to a way to harm, a way to kill the innocent instead of the guilty. The remaining good in Ciel will die. She's not arrogant in this knowledge – it is a fact, hard and unchangeable. He needs her, she cannot leave him, because his sanity will crumble. _And it will be her fault._ How could God ever let such a sinner, such a failure into heaven as a girl who could not even protect the one she loves the most?

She waits, and prays, and prepares.

She's in the study, reading a book on dancing when it happens. The windows crashes open, glass shatters and covers the floor and her arms. It takes her roughly one third of a second to stand up, grab her sword, and ready herself. Instinctively, she screams for Ciel, sitting behind his desk, to get down. Men rush inside from the windows and the doors. Damn, so many. To anyone else, it would seem superfluous. But what if it was just enough? She won't let that happen. She will cut them all to bits.

Ciel shoots them from below his desk, Elizabeth slices through them with her swords and stains herself with blood, Sebastian…well, she doesn't look at Sebastian. She's focused on Ciel, on protecting him, not on the pitch-black butler. He can take care of himself.

"Ciel, behind you!" she screams when a man with a gun sneaks behind the crouching boy. Elizabeth slices off his head the same time Ciel buries several bullets in his chest. She ducks in time to keep a bullet from ripping through her brain, and instead it takes a chunk of her hair. She seethes. Not because of her hair, although that does make her angry, but because the bullet almost hit Ciel.

Another man tries to grab her, holds a knife to her neck. She stabs him and Ciel shoots and shoots and just keeps shooting, so angry. She tries to comfort him through the fighting, but she can't find room for words.

Instead, she keeps on killing.

"Young master," Sebastian calls, voice slightly strained, an odd sound to Elizabeth. But she glances at him, and it takes the same amount of time for her to turn her head ever-so-slightly to see what the butler had been calling him for as it does for a bullet to bury itself in her chest with a sickening _thunk._

She doesn't collapse. Not immediately. She pierces her sword deep into a man's chest before she does.

But then she _does_ collapse, vision darkening slowly as she realizes that she's been shot. Dumb luck, dumb luck, she'd dying because of _dumb luck_. And through her blurry vision as she falls in what feels like slow motion, she sees Ciel screaming her name, trying to run to her, Sebastian pushing him back, protecting him…

_No…I'm the Queen…I'm supposed to…protect him…_

She watches Sebastian forcibly push Ciel, sobbing, back behind him and use the sword she dropped to cut three men to shreds. Ciel is crying her name and reaching towards her, eyes wide with sadness and a little insanity, but Sebastian never lets him pass, protects him from enemy pawns, grinning wickedly at the enemies and at her. And as she hits the ground and loses consciousness, her last horrified thought is;

_I…was wrong. I was never…even the Queen…_


End file.
